Alternative Housing

Fixing our broken housing market 2 May 2017 Members of the LSE London research group, together with academic and research colleagues from elsewhere, met on 26th April to discuss our response to the consultation around the Housing White Paper. Those endorsing this response are listed at the end of the document. Here we present an overview, plus responses to some specific questions. Overview Our overall response to the White Paper was one… Read More

On 19 April 2017, Kath Scanlon presented at the Redesigning Social Housing against Poverty in Europe (RESHAPE) annual conference in Bozen-Bolzano (Italy). Her presentation, Social housing in England after the GFC: affordable vs ‘affordable’ (download PPT here), covered themes such as England’s ‘housing crisis’, changing nature of social landlords, and marginalisation of social housing and growth of ‘affordable’ – but not social — products. Abstract: England’s increasing housing affordability problem, widely described… Read More

LSE London welcomes Dr Montserrat Pareja Eastaway as a visiting scholar from the University of Barcelona where she holds the post of Associate Professor of the Department of Economics. Since 1992, Professor Pareja-Eastaway devotes her research to the analysis of urban problems, specifically its impact on social, cultural, and economic aspects. Multidisciplinary and comparative analyses are constant in her career together with her participation in professional projects in collaboration with public and/or… Read More

In February 2017, the Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) Committee launched an inquiry into whether the housing on offer in England for older people is sufficiently available and suitable for their needs. This inquiry was launched in lieu of a significant housing shortage, a rise in elderly population, pressures on adult social care, and, as mentioned in the announcement, with ‘just 2% of the country’s housing stock designed with pensioners… Read More

LSE London’s 2017 Lent term seminar series begins on the 16th of January. Speakers from within and beyond LSE will focus on London’s current economic and political environment London, covering relevant issues such as London’s planning strategy, Brexit, gender, urban space, and right to the everyday life, West London corridor, suburban gentrification, TFL crossrail, and the Outer London Commission. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields. Each seminar is… Read More

On Thursday, 1 December 2016, LSE London launched the final report and recommendations on how to accelerate the supply of new housing in London. This was a culmination of discussions with specialists from central government, the GLA, and London boroughs together with a small number of other key actors from industry and academia. This event followed up on our interim report we published in June 2016, taking full account of changing political… Read More

The Social Mobility Commission published their annual report on the problem of social mobility in Britain. This year they placed strong emphasis on new evidence that suggests that for young people obstacles for social mobility are getting worse not better. The evidence they provide highlights four key areas that negatively affect the poor, low-and middle-income families and communities in England: a discriminatory education system, a two-tier labour market, an imbalanced economy, and… Read More

The Mayor of London commissioned LSE London research on housing density. This research data is meant to aid in the development of policies and preparation of the London Plan. Links to all of the reports can be found here. LSE London’s Christine Whitehead, Alan Mace, and Ian Gordon wrote two out of the the five reports. The first report titled, ‘Defining, measuring and implementing density standards in London’ (London Plan Density Research… Read More

‘On 15 July the award-winning modular Place / Ladywell development was the venue for a day-long discussion of what the Mayor and others can do to bring forward more alternative housing development in London. The event, hosted by LSE London, brought together 50 people with a range of expertise, including developers, borough planners, activists, academics and architects. The term ‘alternative housing’ encompasses experimental and utopian schemes such as cohousing, technological innovations like… Read More

On Friday, 15 July 2016 LSE London hosted a one-day seminar about scaling up alternative housing development in London. With a new Mayor in office, this was the right time for a constructive conversation about enabling non-mainstream models that represent social, technological and/or financial innovations. These include co-housing, custom-build, volumetric construction and new-build for young professionals. The event was a culmination of two years of LSE knowledge-exchange activities around London’s housing crisis and subsequent recommendations about how… Read More